It would be interesting if somewhere, the system stored the times to the thousandth of a second (.001). I would be interested to know if Phelps and Cavic were closer (or further) than the .01 the clock indicated.
Imagine Phelps 50.589, Cavic 50.590
Excellent pic from SI. Save it to your PC and open in MS Office Picture Manager or something similar and blow it up to 800%. Pretty conclusive.
This is the most unbelievable shot of all. Look at the difference ..........
sportsillustrated.cnn.com/.../content.3.html
wow, thanks for posting the link. i've met mike bottom and didn't think it sounded like him. he seems like a class act.
OK, so I'm wondering why filing a protest for your swimmer wouldn't be a class act on an obviously close race such as this? Is the protest what allows the officials to review the high speed camera results? If so, it would be crazy NOT to file a protest. The goal should be to ensure the person who really did touch the wall first is awarded the gold medal regardless of what country that swimmers is swimming for.
what i should have written is... the media tried to stir up crap, so it made mike sound like a jerk. which he isn't. i'm sure from the swimmers, coaches on the sideline, it did look like cavic touched. it did to me as well, until i saw the film.
the media tried to make it sound as if they were both anti-michael. and pulling at straws. i myself had touch pad issues at a local meet once. (but, i was not the only one. thank goodness for back up timing.
I'm pretty sure the Daktronics timing system makes the 1000th-second data available to the timing operator in a secondary race log output. I don't know what the Omeag system offers. However, it's irrelevant. The rules say we time to 0.01.
We could use high speed replay to look at every single 2-hand touch, and see how far apart your hands were on the touch. Were your hands 0.002 seconds apart on contact? DQ! But we don't do that. That's outside the scope of the rule set.
-Rick
I believe if they were closer it would register as a tie like the 50 free in 2000.
A race was decided by the two-thousandths of a second in the Men's 400 IM at the 1972 Olympics. Gunnar Larsson of Sweden and Tim McKee of the USA did the exact same time of 4:31.98 and this was the first time that they ever had a tie like this when using electronic timing.
The 1972 Olympics was the first Olympics that electronic timing was used for final decisions and rightly so judging from what happened to Lance Larsen in 1960. In the 400 IM both Gunnar Larsson and Tim McKee tied at 4:31.98 and at that time there were no rules to declare the winner. Because Omega could dismantle the timing device and upon inspection find out who won by the thousandth of a second. That is just what they did and Larsson was declared the winner by two-thousandths of a second.
Later upon analyzing this, it was found that lane lines and touch pads could vary ever so slightly as to not be an accurate measurement. That a faster than a blink of an eye would not be a fair judgement. An international rule change was made for the future. If he were to have swam that 400 IM in an Olympics after 1972, he would have tied for it and awarded a gold medal like Gary Hall Jr/Anthony Erving in 2000 and Nancy Hogshead/Carrie Steinseifer in 1984. After the 1972 Olympics it was decided that awarding races by one thousand of a second was not accurate and wrong to do so in the first place and in the future there would be ties if the time was identical to the one hundredth of a second. Tim McKee is the only one of six people that never received a gold medal in these exact circumstances. He is appealing and petitioning the IOC to be awarded the gold medal. The IOC has yet to overturn this decision.
It would be interesting if somewhere, the system stored the times to the thousandth of a second (.001). I would be interested to know if Phelps and Cavic were closer (or further) than the .01 the clock indicated.
Imagine Phelps 50.589, Cavic 50.590
I believe if they were closer it would register as a tie like the 50 free in 2000.
It would be interesting if somewhere, the system stored the times to the thousandth of a second (.001). I would be interested to know if Phelps and Cavic were closer (or further) than the .01 the clock indicated.
Imagine Phelps 50.589, Cavic 50.590
I'v heard that they do keep the times to the thousandth but the times are not official or released.
